‘Men of Fire: José Clemente Orozco and Jackson Pollock’ Exhibit in East Hampton

Pollock’s “Untitled (Bald Woman With Skeleton)   Courtesy of The Hood Museum of Art, 2012 The Pollock-Krasner Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Jackson Pollock is best known for the paintings he made from 1947 to 1951 in which he poured and dripped enamel paint onto large, unprimed canvases tacked to the floor of his studio, which at that time happened to be in Springs, N.Y., a hamlet in the town of East Hampton. These are the works that broke the ice for other painters of his generation, as Willem de Kooning put it, and that turned Pollock into a legend: “Jack the Dripper,” according to a 1956 Life magazine article, whose approach signaled the end of easel painting for many younger artists.

But beyond these Pollocks — there are others. For instance, there is the Pollock of the 1930s, a student looking at the work of Los Tres Grandes — the Mexican muralists Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros and José Clemente Orozco. 

Pollock first saw Orozco’s work in the summer of 1930, when he was living in Los Angeles and went to see “Prometheus” (1930), a new fresco Orozco had painted in the dining hall at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif. The fresco depicts the figure in Greek mythology who stole fire from Zeus and gave it to humankind. The flames, painted in deep, warm colors, were central to Orozco’s aesthetic — hence his nickname Man of Fire, and the title of this small but absorbing show at the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, in East Hampton.

Next: A review of “Men of Fire: José Clemente Orozco and Jackson Pollock,” at New York Times Arts.